Dear Walky

So in 2001, Keenspot wanted to do a bunch of miniseries by us webcomic folks, and I was like, “dude, yeah, I want to draw two comics a day” because well you know me right, and so I told the story of Danny and Joe’s college graduation. It’s 28 comics long and ran at a separate URL concurrent with It’s Walky!. For the purposes of this website, I figure it fits best here, since there’s a little time skip between Sal’s talk with her mom and us rejoining our heroes for the story-in-progress.

Same here, can’t hate Danny, because minus the fundamentalism, he’s pretty much me at his age. Completely deriving his self-worth from whoever he happens to be dating.

Seriously, HOW DID NOBODY EVER TELL ME THIS WAS WRONG! From what I can tell, television, school, the internet….not the even my parents ever even suggested to me that ‘tru luv’ wasn’t the be-all-end-all of happiness, and so I spent six terrible years pursuing fundamentally-broken-relationship after fundamentally-broken relationship and thinking it was the road-map to happiness.

Well, that’d make him a better match for Billie, since alternative timelines seem to indicate that saying “beer” three times in a day can summon her (cumulatively, it doesn’t have to be all in a row or anything).

Reading it from these archives really makes it feel like it’s all one thing. I mean, didn’t Roomies have a whole storyline about Walky when Joyce was first brought to SEMME? Not to mention Joyce herself being on the short list. It’s a lot like “Roomies” and “It’s Walky” are just one thing, not even as separate as like Shortpacked.

I like to think of it as these sort of layers around a core that gradually peel off as the story goes on, like some sort of cocoon that Dumbing of Age came out of later.

I dunno why, but I think Danny’s my favourite Walkyverse character. It may be because he’s such a flawed individual. I guess I feel like I can see my own flaws in him, and seeing him improve, little by little, gives me hope that I can too.
Perhaps what makes this even more impactful for me is the fact that Danny’s change actually represents the real life change of Willis himself. It’s pretty fascinating for me.
So, yeah. He holds a pretty strong connection to me as my gateway into the Walkyverse.